Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig pipeabout.com. NS
Answer
pipeabout.com. 5 NS ns2.pipeabout.com.
pipeabout.com. 5 NS ns1.pipeabout.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.pipeabout.com. 5 A 51.68.148.25
ns2.pipeabout.com. 5 A 72.9.153.109
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0